For this week I wanted to do a quick post talking about Elden Ring Nightreign, a game I highly praised earlier this year, and it’s newly released DLC, the Forsaken Hollows! While there isn’t an insane amount to discuss when it comes to the DLC, I still wanted to talk a bit about it given just how much I’ve been enjoying it. I also wanted to talk some about what has been added in general to Nightreign since I first posted about it since there has been a surprising amount!

Elden Ring Nightreign, made by FromSoftware, is a spin off of Elden Ring but varies pretty heavily from the original game. Unlike the original game, Nightreign is multiplayer focused and is styled more like a rogue lite battle royal! Something very new for FromSoft in general. Fans were understandably worried about this shift but thankfully the game came out great! While it is very different from the original game, something that did alienate more than a few fans, Nightreign was generally very well received and even brought new fans not only to the series but to Soulslike games in general. I want to say this success spurred FromSoft on to make DLC for the game but this isn’t exactly true. The DLC has been planned from the beginning and could even be purchased right from when the game launched with the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition promised two new playable characters, two new bosses and a release before the end of 2025. That release date announcement ended up being kind of a double edged sword but thankfully FromSoft made sure the wait would be worth it. And, as a complete surprise to fans, they made sure players would have plenty to do in the meantime.

Without any prior announcement, FromSoft revealed that there would be new, and free, content coming to Nightreign! The first of which would be Everdark Nightlords, basically harder remixed versions of the bosses already in the game. This quickly reignited my interested in the game and it was the same for many others! While Nightreign is a super fun rogue lite, it’s not nearly as replayable as other big rogue lite games. It doesn’t take long for runs to start feeling vary samey. Admittedly, I never really put this against the game too much though. I always recognized, and praised, Nightreign for being a budget title with all its different reused elements from past Souls games and the smaller team size and cheap cost of the game. For $40, I felt I was getting more than enough from the game. Which is why I was so excited to get free content from it as well!

FromSoft was very smart with how they put out the Everdark bosses. They didn’t release them all at once, instead they released them separately over a few months. We’d basically get them in batches with a new boss each week. There was then a break before another batch was released. Not only was this a great way to build hype and give the team plenty of time to work on the fights, it also made sure players had a reason to keep coming back to the game. Not only that, but they also included some other new content with the Everdark bosses like being able to control the Shifting Earth events and some new Relics to further customize your builds.

Now that’s all well and good, Everdark bosses gave a reason to come back to the game but it didn’t fix one of the game’s bigger issues, keeping players around. After all, like how it was originally, most players put the game down again after beating all the Everdark bosses. There was still no reason to really grind or keep playing, there was no loop. That is, until a few months after that…

After all the Everdark bosses were released, FromSoft announced yet another completely new feature coming to the game. The Deep of Night mode! This mode basically provide a ranked mode to Nightreign and a hard mode! In this mode, enemies would not only hit harder and be more aggressive, they also had the chance of being further amped up and appearing red. These enemies, which would later include bosses, drop items when beaten, specifically new ‘corrupted’ items. These items would have not one but two buffs, but would also come with a debuff, making them a risk versus reward situation! This change alone was already really cool and made the game that much more replayable as there would be far more variety. However, the real replayable nature of this mode came from the ‘Depth’!

Like I was saying, Deep of Night was basically a ranked mode, how this works is pretty simple. Beating the Nightlord at the end of the run gets you points that go to your Depth. You start at Depth 1, here those red enemies will sometimes appear but not by an insane amount and it’ll be very rare to see any red bosses. Additionally, when you lose a run you do not lose any Depth. This changes when you hit Depth 2!In Depth 2, enemies are even more stronger and aggressive with more red enemies appearing, including bosses! In addition to that, losing a run before reaching the Night Lord will lose you Depth. But we’re only at the tip of the ice burg!

Once you’ve hit Depth 3, things start really changing. Not only does everything get stronger and all that, now if you lose to the Night Lord you still lose Depth and to make things even crazier, random elements will be thrown in! Things like hiding key points on the map or hiding which Night Lord you’ll be fighting. Further adding to the difficulty and climb to eventually reach Depth 5! This mode is what I feel finally adds what Nightreign truly needed most, a reason to keep playing. My friends and I now play Nightreign almost daily because of Deep of Night! The grind and escalating difficulty added so much to it. Especially with the element of the new Deep Relics which add even more variety to builds. All of this was more than enough to keep us hooked and playing until the DLC finally came out.

After around seven months of waiting, we finally got the DLC. The Forsaken Hollows! And was it worth the wait? I’d certainly say so!

With the Forsaken Hollows, players get two new playable characters and two new Night Lords to fight along with a new Shifting Earth, an element that changes aspects of the map! Beyond that we also got some new Night bosses from past games. Sadly not too many but seeing some returning faces has been fun! I suppose the best place to start would be talking about the two new playable characters, the Scholar and the Undertaker.

The Scholar is probably the most unique character in the game! His gimmick is all about buffs, debuffs, and items. Probably the most unique thing about him is the fact that the more you use items, the stronger said items become. There are a lot of items in Nightreign, from throwing pots to warming stones that heal you to boiled crab that gives you a defense buff! However, due to the fact these items only last for a very limited amount of time I feel like players very rarely used them or sought them out. With the Scholar though, these items suddenly have far more use! Combine this with the Relic that allows nearby allies to get the same buffs as you when you use an item, and Scholar is probably the best support in the game! While I haven’t played too much of Scholar myself, a friend of mine is completely hooked on him as he offers a very different experience from the rest of the cast of characters. His ultimate ability is pretty cool too! It basically links all enemies in an area together, making them share damage. This is great for group fights but also works well for fights against single targets since it links all players together too. But rather than sharing damage, all players heal when damaging an affect target! Scholar to me shows how creative the development team has gotten since launch. They were able to find a niche play style that is very unique to Nightreign! And while I haven’t played much of Scholar myself, I have been playing a ton of the other new character, the Undertaker!

Compared to the Scholar, the Undertaker is a lot more straight forward. She is a strength character that also scales well with faith, meaning she can use some magic but is mainly going to be melee attacking. She is a damage dealer through and through, and is very much designed that way! Her character ability makes it so she takes far less damage and is much harder to stun, meaning she can attack while being attacked! Her ultimate is, in theory, pretty simple. She flies at an enemy and does a massive attack! However, she also damages any enemy between her and where she’s locked on to, meaning you can deal a ton of damage over lots of enemies. Easily the most unique thing about her though is her passive ability. Whenever a teammate uses their ultimate ability, Undertaker can use hers too free of charge! This opens up a lot of chances to link your ultimate with others any time and really stack on the damage that much harder! This pairs super well with Scholar’s ultimate actually as you can stack on that shared damage super easily without needing to plan too much when it comes to both people having their ultimates ready.

It feels like both the Scholar and Undertaker were designed with team play in mind, an aspect that is missing somewhat from the other playable characters. This to me shows that the development team has been able to learn from players and how they play since the game first launched. And this can also be felt with the two new bosses!

I’m not going to go over the two new bosses in super great detail, since I feel like that is getting into spoilers territory, but I did want to address the fact that they both feel very unique to Nightreign instead of feeling like bosses that could appear in any other Souls game. This can be felt most with the Balancers boss, which is actually a unique group fight! This was something we really didn’t see much of in the base game, every boss besides one, or one and a half I guess since another boss can split into multiple, was a single entity which is why the Balancers feel so unique. They feel like a boss that can only exist in this multiplayer focused game despite the fact I’m sure you could do it solo too. The Balancers also feel like they were made with the Scholar and Undertaker in mind! The Scholar’s ultimate ability to link enemies together obviously helping a ton in this fight. This honestly makes me wish more of the bosses in the base game were like this, being designed with unique mechanics in mind. The Dredgelord also feels very similarly designed but I’m not going to talk too much about them to help keep that fight even more secret!

The last big thing that was added to the game is of course the new Shifting Earth! Shifting Earth events are basically events that change up elements of the map. For example adding a big mountain to climb to the top left of the map or a big city to explore in the bottom left. They are all very unique and do provide plenty of variety to runs! However, the new Shifting Earth goes above and beyond by completely changing the map entirely! Probably the most requested thing to add to the game has been a new map to help add more variety since the other Shifting Earths only change parts of the existing map, so it was very cool and very unexpected to see the newest one completely changes everything, fulfilling that request from players. And the new map is very different as well. It adds a ton of verticality by having there be an upper and lower part to it. Not only that, the usual style of camps are completely gone too! Making this feel far less like just a make over of the old map and instead something entirely new! Sadly, this Shifting Earth is restricted to the two new bosses but it’s still cool to see. And honestly, this and everything else added make me a little sad.

The Forsaken Hollows is so good! It makes an already amazing game better in so many ways. And it shows that the developers have learned a lot and were able to make some truly unique things. Which is why it’s such a shame that this is apparently going to be the only DLC we get for this game.

FromSoft was pretty clear about the fact that Nightreign wasn’t developed to be a live service game or a game that would go on forever which is fine, but it’s so clear that the developers have started to understand how to make Nightreign unique and add elements that really relay on its multiplayer aspects. So it sucks to know that we may not be getting any more for this game despite the fact that it feels like they are only scratching the surface! While I know it’s next to impossible that someone from the Nightreign dev team or from FromSoft sees this post, I still wanted to say please do more with this game! It’s so good and it’s clear that the development team can be so creative! Even if it takes another half a year to get a big content update I’ll still wait it out! Because this game is truly something special…

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? Have you played Nightreign already? Does this DLC make you want to pick it up? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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